My Part Of The World: Biden is no bully, but Ryan is scary

Okay, what we have here is a double standard for how to measure a bully. Most of the commentators are saying that Vice President Joe Biden was snarky and condescending toward his debate opponent Congressman Paul Ryan.

I felt the same way about Gov. Mitt Romney last week in the debate with President Barack Obama. But most of the pundits said he simply “dominated” and “took charge” of the debate. You decide this, but this is annoying style “malarkey” compared to Ryan’s frightening content.

The thing that took my breath away was the section on abortion rights. When moderator Martha Radditz, who was great by the way, asked them to talk about how their religion impacted their thinking about abortion rights, Ryan’s response was very scary to me.

Ryan said he would support Romney’s position on being okay with abortion only in the case of rape, incest or threat to life of the mother. Clearly a person’s right to an abortion is legal under current law. Nobody is “in favor” of abortion, as some weird form of birth control. But what is important to know is that some people are going to make a decision to get one. This has been the case for hundreds of years and will be the case going forward.

What is also clear is that many Republican-led state legislatures around the nation have been introducing bills to limit and/or interrupt efforts to get safe and legal abortions.

And Ryan continued this push during the debate when he said he didn’t think a panel of “unelected” judges should have the power to determine the legality of abortions and that the decision ought to be sent back to the states. What?!

That takes me back to the dark old days of racial segregation. Georgia almost voted to shut down the public schools in the state rather than desegregate them following the 1954

Brown desegregation case. This decision by the U.S. Supreme Court (that same unelected panel) ruled “separate but equal” unconstitutional.

We cannot go back to the dark days of back-alley abortions which threatened the health of and exploited mostly poor women.

People, you cannot put rights up for a vote, or as Vice President Biden would say: you cannot put rights up for a vote, “period.”